Best action movie plot holes of all time

Please vote as you browse around to help the best rise to the top.

Den of Thieves picture

Plot hole: One of the bank robbers, a former soldier, Ray Merrimen just got paroled 8 months ago for a previous felony. This film takes place in California. Convicted felons are prohibited by law from touching or owning firearms. Merrimen is at a public shooting-range with CCTV shooting his firearm. The police officer tracking him since he's a suspect in a new string of former and recent holdups walks into the shooting-range and they just stare at each other. He could've been busted and sent back. (01:03:45 - 01:06:00)

More Den of Thieves plot holes
Twister picture

Plot hole: Throughout the entire movie, barns, houses, cars, 18-wheelers, etc. are demolished and lifted into the air like they were made of paper. And yet Jo and Bill pass through one tornado after another with nothing more than their hair getting messed up a little. You'd think the debris alone flying into their faces at 100 miles an hour would be enough to give them a few injuries.

Krista

More Twister plot holes
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull picture

Plot hole: Hiding in a fridge (or anything else) in order to be conveniently blown out of the way by an exploding nuclear device is absurd beyond belief. The fridge is just so much extra reaction mass and would be vaporised by the expanding nuclear explosion - it wouldn't be daintily picked up and thrown a few kilometers to safety. If it was, why doesn't it land in a shower of similar artifacts which have also been dislodged and thrown around? Incidentally, even if it was thrown out of the way as shown, anyone inside it would be turned into a smear of strawberry jam by the acceleration required to beat the shock and heat wave of a nuclear blast, and then liquefied by the deceleration involved in hitting the ground at that speed.

More Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull plot holes
Bad Boys picture

Plot hole: Why was $100,000,000 worth of heroin sitting in the police vault all this time before the bad guys stole it? Wouldn't the DEA have taken possession of the drugs long before that?

More Bad Boys plot holes
Robocop 3 picture

Plot hole: The opaque red lined map that Otomo retrieves from his first fight is ridiculous. Why would people who know where the hidden base is be carrying around a map on them (which shows a route so basic that they'd have to be brain-dead not to be able to remember it anyway) just so that conveniently one of their enemies can get it?

GalahadFairlight

More Robocop 3 plot holes
Money Train picture

Plot hole: When Charlie sets out to hijack the money train, he jumps off the platform onto the tracks as it arrives, in plain sight of the driver and other passengers at the station, and only puts his mask on once he's in position on the tracks. The train conveniently stops right over top of Charlie, allowing him to enter through the conveniently-placed grate on the train's floor. (01:17:15)

Jay Runkle

More Money Train plot holes
Escape from the Planet of the Apes picture

Plot hole: While it is essential to the story, there is a problem with apes in the space ship. While it is the one that took Taylor to the future, there is no way the chimps could have salvaged the ship from the water (plus there wasn't enough time for such a salvage operation. Kira and Cornelius were living in the ape city we see in "Beneath the Planet of the Apes" never mentioning to Brent that they found a spaceship he could travel back with). They didn't have the technology for such an operation, no diving suits, and chimps are scared of water. Also, the water would have destroyed the power systems of the ship when it sank. (00:00:25)

Movie Nut

More Escape from the Planet of the Apes plot holes
The Recruit picture

Plot hole: There is absolutely no point in getting James involved with Layla for Burke. She could have given him the program, why get someone to sabotage his own plan?

More The Recruit plot holes
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles picture

Plot hole: When April O'Neil calls Vernon Fenwick (drives the channel 6 van), he answers his phone and immediately says "O'Neil". When the scene cuts back to O'Neil, we see she called from a payphone. Fenwick would have no way to know it was her calling.

ScRiZ

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: That isn't a plot hole. Vernon assumed April was the person calling him and was correct. People do this all the time in real life.

BaconIsMyBFF

More Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles plot holes
Wonder Woman 1984 picture

Plot hole: Diana never formally expresses her wish to the stone (as opposed to the coffee guy), but for the rest of the movie it is stated that wishes have to be spelled out explicitly, even if just in agreement with a very leading question. (00:24:00)

Sammo

More Wonder Woman 1984 plot holes
No Time to Die picture

Plot hole: At the end of Spectre, Blofeld loses his eye in the crash. In No Time To Die, he is being held in Belmarsh Prison, which is a high-security facility and houses many terrorists like him. However, despite the stringent security measures, he somehow has access to a bionic eye, which was provided to him during his imprisonment. This would have been thoroughly checked multiple times to ensure its safety before being granted to him.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: Blofeld loses the eye in an explosion earlier in Spectre, before he went to London. He likely already had the eye with him when he was captured after the crash.

In the UK there are several TV shows about police and prison corruption. It isn't much of a stretch to imagine that one of the guards was bribed and smuggled the eye in for him. Blofeld is a criminal mastermind - he would have many resources at his disposal despite capture.

He just happened to have a bionic eye on his person as a backup in case he lost one of his real ones in an accident?

Phaneron

More No Time to Die plot holes
The Lost World: Jurassic Park picture

Plot hole: How did the men on the ship get killed? The bridge was intact and the T-Rex was still inside the cargo hold. [A raptor was meant to escape from the boat when it pulled in to the harbour, but they cut the scene from the film and now that bit doesn't appear to make any sense.] (01:40:55)

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: The idea of raptors being on the boat is a myth (likely spawned from a similar thing happening in the first book's ending). Though it's very poorly communicated and leaves many unanswered questions (the captain's hand the least of which), the dead hand holding the cargo hold controls implies that the T-Rex somehow got free, killed the crew, then was either lured or willingly returned to the hold where a dying worker closed the doors again.

More The Lost World: Jurassic Park plot holes
Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves picture

Plot hole: The Bishop in the film is performing the duties you would expect of someone in his position (giving mass, hearing confessions, performing weddings etc.) He has his own private chambers in the cathedral, refers to Robin as 'the boy I knew' and talks about hearing his Father's confession four months earlier; so he's been around for a while. The problem is the credits refer to him as the 'Bishop of Hereford'. No explanation is ever given for why the Bishop of a city 100 miles away is living and working in Nottingham rather than looking after his own diocese; or why the Bishop of Nottingham isn't around to look after his. (The Bishop of Hereford was an enemy of Robin Hood in the original ballads, and it's likely the filmmakers just gave that name to the Bishop in the film due to its familiarity, without thinking about the plot hole this creates).

More Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves plot holes
London Has Fallen picture

Plot hole: After an assault on the scale that's been witnessed, covering a wide area of London by extremely well prepared attackers, there's no way Marine 1 would fly to the airport at low altitude within easy range of missiles, and then when attacked, double back over the areas that have already been attacked where hostiles would still be present. (00:35:00)

Jon Sandys

More London Has Fallen plot holes
Flight of Fury picture

Plot hole: The admiral receives the news of the stolen aircraft from the general over an open radio, with umpteen enlisted personnel within earshot. However, when the air group commander asks what the OP is about, the admiral tells him that it is on a need-to-know basis.

More Flight of Fury plot holes
3,000 Miles to Graceland picture

Plot hole: How could the police miss finding Cybil in the trunk of Michael Zane's car when it was in an impound lot? They would have definitely searched the car if he was found in violation of a federal offence (for carrying the weapons). Even if they didn't do a search, they would certainly have heard the sounds that Cybil would have made from being locked in the trunk.

More 3,000 Miles to Graceland plot holes
The Game picture

Plot hole: When Nick confronts the P.I. and yells "Why are you following me?", he looks inside the car and see the file with his picture on the front seat. The P.I. notices this and turns the file over. After Nick grabs his gun, the P.I. jumps out on the other side, raises his hands in the air and tells him someone hired him and runs off. As the P.I. runs off, Nick yells "Who hired you?" as he stands alone next to the car. He then waits a minute and walks off. If he really wanted to know more information, he could have taken the file that was right in front of him on the carseat. It makes no sense that he is desperate for information about the strange events that are going on, sees this file on him, and yet doesn't even pick it up or look at it. (00:59:55)

More The Game plot holes
Fast & Furious 8 picture

Plot hole: The nuclear codes are stolen and the Russian guy holding them was let go by Dom. He would contact his government to let them know and the codes changed. Cypher would also know this so her plan is flawed.

More Fast & Furious 8 plot holes
Venom: Let There Be Carnage picture

Plot hole: A core plot point (lifted by the comics) is that Venom needs phenethylamine, and the only way to get it is from brains and from chocolate. Let's just go with it and forget the fact that phenethylamine can be legally purchased as dietary supplement, which would solve every problem. So, Venom gets incredibly angry because Mrs. Chen's shop ran out of chocolates, and *therefore* they need to go raid a chicken plant to eat some chicken brain. Uh, Venom lives in San Francisco. Chocolate is sold everywhere. If Mrs. Chen ran out of it, there are hundreds of stores and vending machines that have it in abundance. The escalation does not make sense.

Sammo

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: The point is he needs to steal it. At Mrs. Chen's shop he gets it for free because he protects her from robbers. Eddie doesn't have the money to buy all the chocolate Venom needs all the time. Stealing some chickens as an alternative is better than trying to shoplift at a different store.

lionhead

In the rest of the movie Eddie lives in his old apartment constantly in need of repairs, but shows zero serious money problems. He has lavish breakfasts, and he replaces the $2,000 TV the same day. Raiding the chicken place appears riskier than slipping his symbiote in a vending machine or shoplift, especially if it's just temporary - again assuming he's so poor that he literally has no money to eat, which is something the movie should have let us know, instead of pointing to the contrary and making him talk angrily about the need for them to not draw attention.

Sammo

Not only are the original mistake and Sammo 100% correct, but chocolate isn't exactly expensive. You can get 5 pound bulk orders of melting chocolate on Amazon for like... $25. And that's just a quick 2-second Amazon search. You could probably get it even cheaper elsewhere online. Even if Eddie hypothetically has little money (which doesn't seem to be the case - he has a nicely sized apartment in a major city, new TV, etc.), it's still ridiculous that he couldn't get his hands on chocolate. This is definitely a case of the movie ignoring practicality and reason to manufacture a funny situation.

TedStixon

I agree. There are many other stores that sell candy so all Eddie had to do was to go to one of those instead. Plus, at the end of the first movie, Eddie told Ann that he was going to become an investigative journalist, so he has a new job.

Suggested correction: Which would you rather have phenethylamine, chicken, or chocolate for dinner? That's like saying just because we need food to survive...we should just eat anything or buy our base vitamins and minerals over the counter and from the store.

DetectiveGadget85

Sure. How does that have anything to do with the entry? Venom wanted chocolate for dinner and not chicken, supplements to a diet don't mean that you can't eat actual food and the main point was and is that if a store in a metropolis is sold out of chocolate of any kind, there are a dozen other stores in a few blocks' radius who sell it without you having to resort to crime to eat it.

Sammo

More Venom: Let There Be Carnage plot holes
Back to the Future Part II picture

Plot hole: If Old Biff changed his past and went back to 2015, he goes back to HIS future, not the bad future, but Doc later tells Marty that if he were to go to the future to stop Biff from taking the almanac, he'd go to the bad future, so Old Biff technically shouldn't have been able to return to "his" future at all.

Upvote valid corrections to help move entries into the corrections section.

Suggested correction: The effects of the past being altered may not have happened immediately. It is possible that it took time for the timelines to adjust to the changes of events, meaning enough time would have passed to change 1985 when they return, but not enough time could have passed to change 2015. By the time Doc says if they went back to 2015 they would be going to an alternate future, some time has passed, so the effects of the past being altered and taking ahold in 2015 and altering it are more likely to have occurred by then.

Casual Person

Here is what you say: "perhaps it took time for the time lines to adjust." What kind of time would timelines take? Time is time, it doesn't take time to change the timeline. That doesn't make any sense. Some people claim it was the DeLorean itself that came back to its own original timeline and only then reset itself in the new one, but then the new timelines being erased later on wouldn't have happened either. So its a genuine plot hole.

lionhead

It's established in the first film that it takes time for the changes to take effect. Marty and his siblings slowly disappear from the photo, rather than instantly. Although the scene in BTTF2 was deleted, it was filmed showing Biff dying and slowly fading away after his return to his present.

Yet they were restored instantly without any outside influence at the end of the movie. There are a lot of things wrong with this movie and the first one. Old Biff disappearing should mean that Marty and Doc should slowely disappear as well, even the DeLorean. But they didn't, that doesn't make any sense. The point is there is a plot hole, somewhere. To know where all you can do is look at it logically and then you automatically come up with Old Biff going back to the future but not the alternate future. If he did there wouldn't have been a movie, but that's the plot hole.

lionhead

The timeline didn't change until he made his first bet which was some years I think after receiving it. He immediately travelled forward after giving the act, meaning he will still jump forward to the original future.

The timelines would instantly change, and Old Biff couldn't possibly have returned to "normal" 2015. It's just a poorly-thought-out time travel plot hole (or a deliberate error to expedite the storyline).

Charles Austin Miller

Suggested correction: In context, Doc was saying that they couldn't return to 2015 to stop Biff from stealing the time machine, because Biff didn't steal the time machine in the alternate 2015, he only stole it in the original 2015. Marty and Doc didn't stay long enough in 2015 after Biff returned, and that's why they didn't see any differences. Also, though they were unaware of it, Biff was dead in the alternate 2015, so the disasters he caused might have reverted back after his death.

More Back to the Future Part II plot holes